Here is yet another sign the iPhone 8 might be failing

While Samsung continues to lead as the top smartphone vendor in Q3, 2017, when it comes to the most shipped smartphone it was the year-old iPhone 7 from Apple, according to research firm Canalys.

A total of 13 million iPhone 7 units were sold in Q3 2017. This falls well short of its predecessor, the iPhone 7 line, which topped 14 million in its first quarter after the release, But while Apple shipped 5.4 million units of the iPhone 8, it shipped 6.3 million of the larger iPhone 8 Plus. Canalys said this is key to Apple's strategy of maintaining market share and offering several price points for consumers, ranging from the affordable iPhone SE and iPhone 6s up to the top-tier iPhone X. Now, with the iPhone X, Apple is using OLED displays (a first on an iPhone) and depth-sensing cameras, which enable the device's face-based unlocking feature.

It is pretty much known now that the iPhone 8 series by Apple isn't going to sell as well as its previous iterations.

After the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s, the top five best-selling phones were Samsung's Galaxy J2 Prime and the Oppo A57, which both reached 7.8 million units, and Oppo R11 with 7.2 million units. ScientiaMobile's MOVR finds that the Apple iPhone 6S is also the most used smartphone in nearly every continent except for South America and Africa, which had the Samsung Galaxy J5 and AppleiPhone 6 as the most used, respectively. This implies that component costs as a percentage of the device's retail price would stand at 37%, compared to about 35% for the iPhone 7 and 36% for the iPhone 8 Plus. Combined, these amounted to 11.8 million units shipped.

Apple'siPhone shipments for the final calendar quarter of 2017 should look vastly different thanks to the November 3 release of the iPhone X. "It is aggressively defending its market share, but it will not compromise its rigid margin structure to do so", said Stanton.

Samsung continued to lead the charts with 82.8 million smartphones, an increase of 8.2 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. This was thanks to growth in its J-series, which did particularly well in India and the Middle East. Samsung's new Galaxy Note8 dispelled any remaining negative sentiment around the Note series, shipping a solid 4.4 million units.

However, they think that competition will get tougher now that many other brands have 18:9 bezel-less phones.